By E. A. Barbour
(See also Wiki-Paranoia Part I)
Another piece of the Wikipedia puzzle is the role of Usenet newsgroups in the evolution of “wiki-culture”. Usenet was one of the earliest features of the Internet, popular long before it was all opened to the public in 1994. Newsgroups served as “bulletin boards” before the World Wide Web was invented. Since they were usually hosted on university servers and passed freely from node to node, they gained the same libertine culture as the hacker underground. In the late 1990s, use (and abuse) of Usenet for file sharing exploded, and anyone who wanted to push a minority, obscure, or “crank” point of view could usually find a home on a related newsgroup. It became a central point for protests against the Church of Scientology, since it was difficult to attack using attorneys and court orders. Before backbone servers and ISPs started blocking or disabling Usenet in the 2000s (claiming that it was “dying” anyway), it was the place to be for hardcore trolls. The case for keeping Usenet alive was not helped by the terabytes of regular pornography, child pornography, pirated movies, pirated music, garbage advertising, and “warez”, or pirated commercial software, available on special newsgroups. Usenet carried everything, good or bad. It was wasteful, it was “open”, and it was a mess. And trolls enjoyed a field day thereon.
No wonder Jimmy Wales was attracted to it. Starting in 1992, he was a regular on an Ayn Rand mailing list and in the newsgroup alt.philosophy.objectivism. That was where he first met Larry Sanger and Tim Shell. In February 1996, a new group was started, humanities.philosophy.objectivism, and Jimbo was made one of the moderators. Late 1996 was a banner time, as the traffic on Jimbo’s favorite newsgroup ramped up just when
…continue reading Wiki-Paranoia ~ PART II: Newsgroup Trolls, Gays and Patrollers